For the Anniversary of My Death

For the Anniversary of My Death
W.S. Merwin
page 258-259

Flipping through the book the title of this poem immediately caught my attention and I had to stop and read it to see what it could be about. The poem has somewhat of a dark tone, which could be expected of a poem about death. The poet seems to be pondering on his death based on the premise that every year that goes by he passes every date, any one of which could be the date on which he will eventually die. Merwin writes with a lot of metaphor, many of which I do not understand and some seem strange and almost contradictory such as "Like the beam of a lightless star." It seems like by the end of the poem Merwin comes to terms with his mortality by both accepting the inevitability of death and coming to an appreciation of life; he writes "As today writing after three days of rain/Hearing the wren sing and the falling cease/And bowing not knowing to what" What I get from this is that the three days of rain symbolize the feelings of depression and thoughts of death and mortality but as the rain stops and and the birds can be heard again, he becomes complacent with death and has reverence for life as the metaphorical sun rises after the rain.